ONGC's latest tender puts cost before quality, attracts old jack-up rigs

State-owned ONGC is the largest client for most of the domestic oil drilling industry

The Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC)’s latest tender, drawn out on the Quality and Cost based selection (QCBS) scheme, has attracted old jack-up rigs averaging 41 years.

The earlier tender from the country’s largest oil and gas explorer did not have the QCBS scheme and the age of jack-up rigs averaged 36 years. Indicating ONGC’s skew for lower-cost rigs over the better-quality and newer generation of jack-ups.

ONGC introduced the QCBS criterion which gives 25 per cent weightage to technical and 75 per cent to commercial aspects. But, in effect, the technical weightage given is only 7.5 per cent and this